Brooke and Gryffin unwinding after behavioral training session
Author: Brooke Weaver | Major: Nursing | Semester: Spring 2022
Animal-assisted therapy is a relatively new area of study in pediatric autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Typically an individual with ASD could have a service animal- meaning the canine is trained to assist him or her as an individual person with his or her specific ASD symptoms; however, with our research we are placing Gryiffin, our research therapy dog, in specialized canine training to teach him to respond to ASD symptoms as a service animal would to its individual handler, yet he will be working with multiple children with a broad spectrum of ASD symptoms rather than an individual person.
There has been very limited research conducted on a therapy style such as this, making Gryffin not only a groundbreaking canine, but an extraordinary opportunity for involvement and learning as a student nurse. This research could allow families the opportunity to experience lowered costs of ASD therapy treatment options- as multiple children with ASD can be served by our single therapy dog as well as allowing for more options of ASD treatments. This will also create an opportunity for children with ASD to connect and create relationships with not only the canine, but with the other members in their therapy groups enhancing psychosocial development and optimal growth.
I chose to pursue my research project based off my interest in service animal training as well as ASD research- I have some background in the behavior of Labrador Retrievers as I have two golden labs at home that I raised and trained, though not to the same degree of specialized training that Gryffin has. Our thesis project was already being created by Dr. Kilmer when she came to my class of first semester junior nursing students to present her project and gather a team of student nurses- after which we went to an information meeting and we were individually interviewed, then were selected to participate. I have learned many tactics to therapy animal training as well as ways to monitor for stress traits along with other behaviors a service animal can present during training and therapy sessions. Thus far in our research, we have run into very few problems, typically concerning animal behavior as he is still a puppy; however, we have overcome these challenges by continuing our training and offering positive reinforcement for desired behaviors as well as socialization with the nursing students in our building.
Our faculty member serves as an overseer as well as a progress monitor. In our training we have four trainers that all work together- Madelyn T., Emily G., Emma M., and Brooke W.(myself)- to train Gryffin as a service/therapy animal. We currently have not traveled to conduct our research, but we have used local participants from the Fayetteville community. For this next semester we will shift from training Gryffin to assisting him with participants in a therapy setting while monitoring responses from the animal and participants.